A long time ago, when Windows was busy crashing into walls, when the Mac OS was running around naked in the woods looking for someone to protect its memory, and when Linux was frantically jumping up and down with a lollipop in its mouth, we were blessed with the BeOS. It was new, free of legacy nonsense, fast, and designed from the ground-up to make sense (which it didn't, but at least they tried). It could do all sorts of fancy stuff that the other operating systems could only dream of, but at the same time, trivial things like actually getting networking and the internet to work brought it to its knees. Sadly, it didn't make it because Windows and the Mac OS were bullying BeOS, and of course it didn't help that BeOS' parents didn't really know anything about the real world either. The community around BeOS, however, never really died out, and the central hub, BeBits, weathered all storms. It found a new owner today.

BeBits was founded in 1999, and was destined to become the FreshMeat of the BeOS world. Application developers posted their works of art to BeBits, either for free, or as a product for which you had to pay. BeBits offered the infrastructure so that BeOS developers could get in touch with their users via forums and email. Despite BeOS' death, BeBits marched on, and to this day, is the largest and most up-to-date repository of software for BeOS and Haiku.

Things weren't all roses and butterflies, though. The founders and maintainers of BeBits had trouble dedicating enough time to the site; more important matters like family, work, and school prevented them from doing so. Emails were left unanswered, technical problems arose, broken links were left unfixed. Sadly, the timing for this decline in quality isn't perfect: Haiku is doing well, and is nearing its first lapha release. BeBits needs to be in order.

As such, the original founders and maintainers of BeBits, Sean Heber and Greg Nichols, have passed on the torch.

We're very pleased (and a little sad) to announce that as of today, we are turning BeBits over to a new owner and operator. We won't say at this point who the new owner is yet; he will make that announcement himself when the time is right. But we will say that he's a dedicated and active member of the community, and that he's got some great plans for the site. After almost 10 years, it's hard for us to walk away, but we're thrilled that BeBits will be in such capable hands.

It's good to know that BeBits won't get lost in time like all the other BeOS community websites, and that it will continue to be the centre of the BeOS Haiku community.